The historian must recognize these limitations and he must use the caricature as itself a record of the existenceof this temper
in contemporary life, but without accepting it at its face value. The caricature is an intellectual and artistic rash that appears when the body politic is out of order , and the
historian can regard it only as a symptom of the existence of unhealthy conditions. It flourishes best amid disordered con
ditions of politics , when ill-gotten wealth is a festering sore ,
when in times of war every man 's hand is against every man. Its value to the historian lies in his ability to measure by it the degree to which society has departed from the normal and to
diagnose the particular nature of the disease that afflicts it.36 The cartoon tells a story , points a moral, assumes knowledge,
intelligence, judgment,and imagination on thepart of its readers, and it is in effect " a leading article transformed into a picture .” and successful career. Accounts of the Wednesday dinners where the cartoon of the ensuing week has been decided on as well as the general policy of the paper may be found in M . H . Spielmann , The History of Punch ; A . W . à
Beckett, The à Becketts of Punch, and Recollections of a Humorist; G . S. Lay ard , A Great “ Punch " Editor Being the Life, Letters and Diaries of Shirley Brooks; F. C . Burnand , Recordsand Reminiscences, 2 vols.; W . P . Frith , John Leech, 2 vols.; H . Furniss, Confessions of a Caricaturist, 2 vols.; Walter Jer rold , Douglas Jerrold and Punch; W . M . Thackeray, “ The Mahogany Tree ," Ballads and Tales.
36 Addison notes that “ politicians can resolve the most shining actions among men into artifice and design ; others, who are soured by discontent, repulses , or ill-usage , are apt to mistake their spleen for philosophy ; men of profligate lives . . . are for pulling down all appearances of merit which
seem to upbraid them ; and satirists describe nothing but deformity . From all these hands we have such draughts of mankind, as are represented in
those burlesque pictures which the Italians call caricaturas; where the art
consists in preserving, amidst distorted proportions and aggravated features, some likeness of the person , but in such a manner as to transform the most agreeable beauty into the most odious monster.” - The Spectator , No. 537 ,
November 15, 1712 . This has been noted as the second known instance of the use of the word caricature, even in its Italian form , the first being found in a work on Christian Morals written more than a hundred years earlier by Sir Thomas
Browne.
It would be difficult to give a better description of caricature than that of Addison 's.
Augustin Filon in discussing Hogarth cites the well-known anecdote of Charles Lamb who as a child visited a cemetery and said to his sister,
“ They are all good here; where are the wicked buried? ” He makes the application to Hogarth 's work and remarks, “ All are wicked here; where are
the good ? ” — La Caricature en Angleterre,pp. 73–74. This is themost search ing summary noted of the limitations of caricature ashistorical m
